Page 6

Kane turned away. Who am I kidding?

*

Ellie and Kane followed the rescue vehicle from the air until it negotiated the last rocky outcrop and turned onto the track that led back to the highway. It wasn’t far from there to Jabiru, and Kane had confirmed that a team was waiting for the patient at the medical centre. The young mother had regained consciousness before they’d taken off, and one of the paramedics in the ground crew had given her a morphine injection. They’d done well but Kane’s reactions had left Ellie wondering. She’d had to ask him three times to put the call in to the medical centre. He’d frozen at the sight of the blood.

For a tough guy – and he was strong, she knew that instinctively – his confidence was shadowed by something unspoken. He hadn’t said a word to her since she put the bird in the air. She pushed the worry away; all types passed through the Territory. Most people had baggage, but it had nothing to do with her. There was no point giving into the curiosity.

‘We’ve got about ten minutes left till sunset. Would you like a quick scenic tour?’ She turned to him and he reluctantly met her gaze. ‘It’s by far the best time of day to see the park. If you’re going to fly in Kakadu, it’s much easier to see the flight paths from up here. Get your bearings from the air.’

‘No need. I won’t be flying here again.’

Ellie shrugged as Kane turned away to look out the side of the helicopter. She’d tried, but that was enough. Whatever his problem was, he could get over it himself.

He wasn’t the first male to doubt her skill and he wouldn’t be the last, but she was done with trying to crack this tough nut. Chauvinist pig. If he didn’t want to fly, that was Jock’s problem. But he sure wouldn’t last long up here if he wasn’t prepared to give a little. This was just the first of the emergencies for the tourist season.

As she turned the helicopter towards Makowa Lodge, lush green river flats were gradually replaced by scrubby trees on red dirt. The route she always followed took them over the rim of the national park, and then across the fence that divided the old family farm from the park. Today she was curious to see where those trucks had gone this afternoon.

In the paddock below, row after row of dead and shrivelled mango trees formed a geometric pattern. Ellie touched her fingers unconsciously to her lips and whispered, ‘Hey Dad,’ as she always did when she flew over their old home. The ache of unshed tears settled behind her eyes when she looked ahead at the towering cumulonimbus clouds to the north where the South Alligator River drained into Van Diemen’s Gulf.

One afternoon when she was a small child, she and Dad had lain on their backs on the soft grass and looked up at the sky. He’d told her that when he was an old man in heaven he would be lying up in those fluffy clouds looking down on her and her sisters. She’d never forgotten it, and now those towering pillars of white cloud brought her undone whenever she saw them.

He’d never made it past middle age, let alone become an old man.

A flash of movement from the ground caught her eye and Ellie leaned forward, surprised to see a cleared patch on the southern edge of the property. Heavy machinery was working in the paddock where her father had once planted his new hybrid variety of mangoes. Instead of neat rows of trees, a gaping red hole scarred the ground and a couple of huge yellow earthmoving machines were moving back and forward near the river. As well as the three oversized trucks she’d followed, half a dozen work utes were parked along the edge of the road.

‘What the hell?’ Ellie muttered. She took her eyes off the controls for a second and craned over her shoulder, looking back as the farm disappeared from sight. She glanced across at Kane but his head was back against the headrest and his eyes were closed. She dipped the helicopter and turned in a sweeping arc to cross the back of the farm, lower this time. Now what she saw below her filled her with a deep sense of unease. It looked like major earthworks.

What the hell is going on down there?

If something was happening right on the park boundary, surely there would have been something about it in the news. Unless something had happened while she was away.

She’d give Panos a call as soon as she got back to the lodge. And she’d chase up Bill Jarragah as well.

She glanced across at Kane again. His eyes were still shut, and there were tight lines around his mouth. Ellie took a deep breath; suddenly she felt the mother of a headache coming on. She’d worry about what she’d seen later when she had time to think. The township of Jabiru appeared below and she took a wide turn to the north to avoid the telecommunications towers. As she banked towards Makowa Lodge, the Ranger mine spread out below them.

‘What’s that water?’ Ellie jumped as Kane’s voice intruded on her thoughts. For the first time, he was showing some interest in what was below.

‘That’s one of the tailing dams at Ranger – the uranium mine.’ She turned the bird further to the east and dropped lower. ‘Look at this.’

Kane let out a low whistle as the barren landscape appeared below them. A huge circular hole cut a swathe more than three kilometres wide through the greenery.

‘Ugly, isn’t it? It’s been there since I was a kid.’

‘How come they’re allowed to mine here? I thought Kakadu was a World Heritage site?’

‘It is. There have been so many close calls since it opened, but the authorities won’t shut it down. There’s just too much money involved.’

Kane grunted.

‘And it’s not just uranium. Do you know there are applications to mine for oil and gas on more than a million square kilometres up here in the Territory?’ She’d learned all this from her mother at Em’s place. ‘And seabed mining too.’

‘I don’t know much about it.’ Kane nodded briefly and looked away, obviously losing interest. ‘I’ve been . . . away.’

Seeing Ranger from the air made Ellie all the more determined to find out what was happening at the back of the old farm. One blight on this beautiful landscape was enough.

Once they were safely on the ground beside the hangar, she shut everything down, and Kane eased himself stiffly from the helicopter. As he began the post-flight checks, Ellie noticed that he was favouring his right leg and had a slight limp. He was different to the usual light-hearted jocks who arrived to fly the choppers here.

Military? Of course. There was a feeling of the services about him. She could imagine him in a uniform. It was just something about him, something that didn’t go with the bare chest, the gum chewing and the casual attitude he was trying so hard to put across.